The US Coast Guard has held a press conference about ongoing efforts to recover the lost Titan submersible and the five people who went down in the sub to see the Titanic wreckage.
Captain Jamie Frederick stressed that the coordinated team is working "tirelessly" to find the missing crew. He also addressed stories that a banging noise had been heard at 30-minute intervals.
Captain Frederick explained that the search area is now twice the size of the state of Connecticut and as deep as two and a half miles into the sea.
He also addressed rumors that debris from the submersible had been spotted, stating that it is "not uncommon" for debris to surface during a search of this nature.
The captain also said that the five people onboard have "limited" rations of food and water, but he was not sure how much. He insisted that it's important to "keep hopeful" about the reported banging noises but that it remains unclear what those noises might be.
Carl Hartsfield, an expert on ocean physics and sounds, also spoke at the conference. While he was unable to shed much more light on what the sounds might be, he did say that "nothing is ruled out."
When asked what the noise sounds like, he said, "The noise is very complex in the ocean. You have to be an acoustic analysis … you have to have context. They are trying to put all the noises together. The noises are described as banging … they have to eliminate other manmade noises in the ocean."
It's believed that the five people onboard have fewer than 20 hours of oxygen left. The search effort is in the right area to find the submersible, and more ships will continue to join in the coming hours.
